General Motors said Monday it will close five factories and lay off nearly 15,000 workers in a move that shows the economy may be starting to slow and dents President Trump’s claim to be leading a renaissance for industrial America.
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Coming just weeks after Republican candidates lost several congressional seats across the industrial Midwest, GM’s action carries a stark political warning for the president. If voters conclude that Trump failed to deliver on his promise to return lost jobs and prosperity to the region, his reelection hopes could be dealt a blow.

In 2016, he won four states with significant ties to the auto industry: Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. They provided nearly a quarter of the 270 electoral votes needed for victory.

Before leaving the White House Monday for a campaign rally in Mississippi, the president told reporters he had complained to GM chief executive Mary Barra about the shutdowns.

“I was very tough,” the president said. “I spoke with her when I heard they were closing. And I said: ‘You know, this country has done a lot for General Motors. You better get back in there soon. That’s Ohio, and you better get back in there soon.’”

Trump said he was pressing the company to replace lost production in the factories it plans to shutter with other models, citing the Lordstown plant, which makes the Chevy Cruze.

“Their car is not selling well. So they’ll put something else — I have no doubt that, in a not-too-distant future, they’ll put something else. They better put something else in,” he said.

Trump’s ire may be linked to his repeated promises to reverse the Rust Belt jobs hemorrhage that he said had emptied the region’s factories as a result of poorly designed trade policies.

“They’re all coming back. They’re all coming back. Don’t move, don’t sell your house,” the president said during a July 2017 visit to Youngstown, Ohio. “We’re going to fill up those factories or rip them down and build new ones.”

During an October 2016 campaign rally in Warren, Mich., site of one of the targeted transmission plants, Trump promised: “If I’m elected, you won’t lose one plant, you’ll have plants coming into this country, you’re going to have jobs again, you won’t lose one plant, I promise you that.”

More Americans than ever dislike the job President Donald Trump is doing in the White House, a new poll indicated on Monday.

The latest survey from Gallup showed that Trump’s disapproval rating had shot up to 60 percent. That’s tied for his all-time high and the sharp 7 percentage point uptick from the week prior. Just before the midterm election, Trump’s disapproval stood at 54 percent, according to Gallup.

While Trump’s disapproval rate has risen, his approval rate has dropped. Only 38 percent of Americans approved of his job performance, according to the new poll from Gallup. That’s a 5 percentage point drop from the week prior, and approaches his all-time low of 35 percent.
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The poll findings arrived on the heels of a midterm election that saw big successes for Democrats, who easily took back control of the House of Representatives. The Republican Party has hitched its wagon to Trump, but his popularity is struggling.

“This is now the party of Donald Trump. I read articles saying the Republican Party has merged with the Trump coalition—they have no choice. Trump voters own the Republican Party. That’s consolidated,” John McLaughlin, a pollster on Trump’s 2016 campaign, told Politico in a piece published on Friday. “The bad part is they haven’t broadened [his coalition]. They haven’t gotten his job approval over 50 percent, like Reagan. We haven’t done that.”

You may say that Gallup is an outlier but I would point out that the trend is down across the board and that this week’s results were obtained before the news of the GM layoffs and plant closures.